United States | News & Politics

Last Spring, House bill sponsor Rep. Bryan Terry (R–Murfreesboro) claimed the law would help Tennessee recruit and retain physicians, according to Nashville Scene. That’s false. The state has seen a decline in OB-GYNs since Tennessee’s total abortion ban went into effect. Tennessee has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country and ranks among the worst for infant mortality. Combine that with the refusal to expand Medicaid and the lack of rural maternity care, and it’s no surprise Tennessee was named the worst state in the nation to live in, by a recentCNBC study.

And now, thanks to the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” 300,000 Tennesseans may lose health insurance, and nine rural hospitals across the state are at risk of closure. For communities already struggling to keep clinics and hospitals open and with new legal protections for any physician to deny healthcare to whoever they want based on their “lifestyle,” it’s hard to imagine the impact being, as Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) recently put it, “anything but beautiful.”